The Silver spike (12 page)

Timmy shook like he was about to go into convulsions.

“That’s enough, madam,” Fish said.
“You’ve buried your blade to the heart.”

She sputtered, “Why, the
nerve . . . ”

Tully said, “Piss off, bitch. Before I kick your ass up
around your ears.” He used that gentle, even tone Smeds knew
meant maximum danger.

So. Cousin Tully had a little canker of humanity hidden away
after all. Though he would not admit it on the rack.

“I can’t handle this,” Timmy said. “I
think I better stay dead.”

Fish said, “That woman
won’t let you rest in peace, Timmy.”

“I know. I’ll do what I got to do. But not now. I
know a place called the Skull and Crossbones where we can put up
cheap. If it’s still there.”

It was there. It was a place the invaders would have ignored as
too contemptible to burn. It made Smeds think of a hooker still
working twenty years past her prime, pathetic and desperate.

An imperial corporal sat in a chair out front, leaning back
against a wooden wall that had forgotten the meaning of paint. He
held a bucket of beer in his lap. He seemed to be napping. But when
they were a few steps from the door he opened his eyes, checked
them over, nodded, took a drink.

“Catch his emblem?” Smeds asked Fish inside.

“Yes. Nightstalkers.”

The Nightstalker Brigade was the crack outfit in the northern
army, rigorously trained for night operations and combat under
wizard’s war conditions.

Smeds said, “I thought they were out east somewhere,
trying to finish the Black Company.” The proudest honor on
the standard of the Nightstalkers was their defeat of the Black
Company at Queen’s Bridge. Before Queen’s Bridge those
mercenaries had been so glibly invincible that half the empire had
been convinced the gods themselves were on their side.

“They’re here now.”

“What the hell is
going on around here?”

“Guess we better find out. What
we don’t know could eat us
up.”

Timmy talked to the owner, whom he knew slightly. The man
claimed he was full up with the dispossessed. None of those guests
were evident. He hinted he might find space, though, if fate took a
hand. Fishing for a bribe, Smeds figured. Which he would follow
with a deep gouge.

“How much leverage on fate are we talking?” Timmy
asked.

“Obol and a half. Each.”

“You goddamned thief!”

“Take it or leave it.”

The Nightstalker corporal stepped past Smeds and Timmy and
plunked his bucket down in front of the landlord, who had gone as
pale as death. “That’s twice today, dogmeat. And this
time I heard it myself.”

The landlord gulped air, grabbed the bucket, and started to fill
it.

“Don’t try,” the corporal said. “Offer
me a bribe and you’ll stay on the labor gang forever.”
He eyed Timmy and Smeds. “You guys pick yourself a room. On
old Shit for Brains here for a night.”

“I was just joshing with the guys, Corporal.”

“Sure. I could tell. You had them rolling around on the
floor. Bet you’ll have the guy in the black mask in stitches.
He loves you comedians.”

Smeds asked, “What’s going on around here, Corporal?
We’ve been out of town.”

“I could tell. I guess you can see your basic situation.
Some bandits and deserters tore the place up. They wasn’t too
happy about that, down to the Tower. Since we was in the
neighborhood we was one of the outfits got to come in and keep
order. The brigadier, she started out life in the slums of Nihil,
she figures here’s a chance to get even with the kinds of
assholes who made life hell when she was a kid. So you got thieves
hanging from the roof trees. You got your pimps and priests and
pushers, your sharpers and your fences and your whores won’t
learn no better working on the labor gangs eighteen hours a day so
your regular citizens can get on with putting their lives back
together.

“You ask me, she’s too damned lenient. Gives them
too many chances. Shithead here, the famous profiteer, he’s
done used up two of his shots now. First time he got paraded
through the streets with a sign around his neck and got a week on
the labor gang. This time he gets thirty lashes and two weeks.
Because he’s got all that shit between his ears and
ain’t going to learn dick about how he can’t get away
with it, next time they’re going to drag him over to Mayfield
Square and stick a spear up his butt and let him sit on it till he
rots.”

The corporal took a long drink from his refilled bucket, wiped
his mouth on his sleeve, grinned. “Brigadier says let the
punishment fit the crime.” He took another long drink, looked
at the landlord. “You ready to go do it, asshole?”

As he was about to follow the landlord into the street, the
corporal paused. “I reckon you boys will be fair to your
host, here, and treat his place right. ’Less you’re
looking for careers in construction.” He grinned again and
went.

“God damn!” Tully said.

“Yeah,” Smeds agreed.

Fish said, “I have a feeling we’re not going to be
comfortable in this new Oar.”

“Not for long,” Smeds said. “But sufficient
unto the day. Right now I need to get drunk, get laid, get a
night’s sleep somewheres besides on the ground.”

“Not necessarily in that order,” Tully said.

Timmy put on a strained smile. “A bath wouldn’t hurt
anything, either.”

“Let’s get doing what we got to do.”

We come over this hill after what seemed like forever without
seeing people and there across a valley was this walled place that
covered maybe a hundred acres. The wall wasn’t much. It was
maybe eight or ten feet high and no thicker than the kind of stone
walls cotters put around their sheepfolds.

“Looks like a religious retreat,” Raven said.
“No banners or soldiers or anything.”

He was right. We’d seen places with the same look before,
but never so big. “Looks old.”

“Yes. It has a feel to it, too. Peaceful. Let’s go
look.”

“Don’t look like a place Croaker would pass up,
eh?”

“No. He has a bad case of the curiosities. Let’s
hope he hung around long enough to let us gain some
ground.”

We went over and found out our guesses were right. Raven got his
wish. The place was a monastery called the Temple of
Traveler’s Repose and was a kind of warehouse for knowledge.
It had been sitting there soaking it up for a couple thousand
years.

We found out the guys we were chasing had stayed long enough to
teach one of the monks a little Jewel Cities dialect. In fact,
they’d only left that very morning.

Raven got all excited. He wanted to head right on out and the
hell with the sun was going to hit the horizon in another hour. I
wanted to hit him over the head and slow him down. That monastery
looked like a damned good place to take a day off and get human
again.

“Look here, Case,” he cajoled, “they’ll
be making camp by now, right? Traveling with a wagon and a coach
the best they could’ve done is twenty-five miles. Right? We
go all night we can grab off twenty of that, easy.” He
learned that about the wagon and coach from the priest.

“And then we die. You maybe never need a rest, but I need
a rest and the horses need a rest and this looks like the perfect
place to do it. Hell, look at the name.”

He made exasperated noises. After all this time I still
didn’t understand that catching Croaker was the most
important thing in the world. He was so damned tired himself his
thinking was as screwy as a possum’s.

He wasn’t the only one running shy of a full load. That
priest came down with both feet solid on Raven’s side.

Raven grinned when he said, “He claims the omens are so
bad they aren’t letting anybody onto the grounds.
They’re even chasing people out.”

I had enough of the lingo, learned from Raven, to have gotten
part of that. Also something about “the bad storm coming down
from the north.” I saw I wasn’t going to win this round
neither, so I said the hell with it and added a few comments that
would have disappointed my old potato-digging mother. I went and
shared my misery with the horses. They understood me.

Raven worked a deal for some supplies and we headed out. I
wondered how much farther to the edge of the world. We’d
already come farther than I’d ever believed possible.

We didn’t talk much. Not because I had the sulks.
I’d given up on them and went fatalistic a long time ago. I
think Raven was brooding about that bit I’d caught that he
hadn’t mentioned. A bad storm coming down from the north.

In the Jewel Cities lingo “bad“ can mean a couple
three different things. Including “evil.”

There was barely any light left when we came to a strip of
woods. “Going to have to walk this part,” Raven said.
“That priest said the road through is good enough, but
it’s going to be hard to follow in the dark.”

I grunted. I wasn’t thinking about the woods. My mind was
on the funny-looking hills on the other side. I’d never seen
anything like them. They were all steep-sided, smoothly rounded,
covered with a tawny dry grass and nothing else. They looked like
the humped backs of giant animals snoozing with their legs tucked
up underneath them and their heads turned around behind them, out
of sight.

They were very dry, those hills. The light to see them
hadn’t never been good, but I was sure I’d seen a few
black burn scars before it got too dark to see anything.

The woods were bone-dry, too. The trees were mostly some kind of
scruffy oak with small, brittle leaves that had points almost as
sharp as holly leaves. They were a sort of blue-gray color instead
of the deep green of oaks in the north.

A feeble excuse for a creek dribbled through the heart of the
wood. We watered ourselves and the horses and took time out for a
snack. I was too tired to waste energy talking, except to say,
“I don’t think I got what it takes for another fifteen
miles. Uphill.”

Half a minute later he surprised me by saying.
“Don’t know if I got what it takes, either. Only so far
you can go on willpower.”

“Hip bothering you?”

“Yes.”

“Might ought to have it looked at.”

“Good job for Croaker, since he done it. Let’s see
how much we got left.”

We managed about six more miles, the last couple up the dry
grass hills, before we sort of collapsed by silent agreement. Raven
said, “This time we’ll give it an hour before we hit it
again.”

He was stubborn, that bastard.

We hadn’t been there five minutes before I spotted
evidence of that bad storm from the north. “Raven.”

He looked. He didn’t have nothing to say. He just sighed
and helped me watch the lightning.

There wasn’t a cloud between us and the stars.

Toadkiller Dog, carrying the wicker man, eased over a ridge
line, halted. He shivered.

For leagues now they had sensed the presence of that place over
there, an aura ever increasing in intensity and its ability to
irritate. If they were sons of the shadow this was a fastness of
the enemy, a citadel of light. There were few such places left.

They had to be expunged when found.

“Strange magic,” the wicker man whispered. “I
don’t like it.” He glanced at the northern sky. The
creatures of the tree god were up there somewhere, just beyond
sight.

This was not a good place to be, sandwiched between them and
that place.

The wicker man said, “We’d better do it
fast.”

Toadkiller Dog had no desire to do it at all. He would bypass,
given a choice.

He had choices, of course, but not many. He might get away with
defying the wicker man once. That once had to be saved. In the
meantime he responded to the ego of the wicker man, doing the
insane, the stupid, sometimes the necessary, biding his time.

The army presently numbered two thousand. The men had collapsed
in exhaustion the moment their commanders stopped moving. The
wicker man summoned two to help him dismount.

They were rich men, every one. Their packs bulged with the
finest treasure taken from cities their masters had devoured and
from fallen comrades. Few had been with the army more than two
months. Of the two thousand only a hundred had crossed the sea with
the Limper. Those who did not desert had no cause to be optimistic
about a long life.

The wicker man leaned against Toadkiller Dog.
“Scum,” he whispered. “All scum.”

Close. Most with any spark of courage or decency deserted
quickly.

The wicker man eyed the sky. A faint smile stretched the ruin of
his mouth. “Do it,” he said.

The soldiers groaned and grumbled as they stood to arms, but
stand to they did. The wicker man stared at the temple. It abused
his confidence, but he could not discern any concrete cause.
“Go!” He slapped Toadkiller Dog’s shoulder.
“Scout it, damn you!”

He then assembled the surviving witchmen from the northern
forest. They had not been much use lately, but he had a task for
them now.

There wasn’t a breath of warning. One moment the night was
still except for the chirp of crickets and the uneasy rustle of men
on the brink of an assault, the next it was alive with attacking
mantas. They came from every direction, not fifty feet high, in
twos and threes, and this time their lightning was not their most
important weapon.

The first flights ghosted in and dropped fleshy sausage-shaped
objects four feet long. Boiling, oily flame splashed everywhere.
Toadkiller Dog howled in the heart of an accurately delivered
barrage. Soldiers shrieked. Horses screamed and bolted. Baggage
wagons caught fire.

The wicker man would have screamed in rage had he been able. But
had he had the capability, he would not have had the time.

He had begun preparing a snare. And while he had concentrated on
that they had caught him flat-footed.